Personally, I think nuke is a huge change from usual antag rounds, and I adore it. it has a clear danger in the form of the activation of the nuke, and gets everyone involved.
If we were changing anything about nuclear rounds, this is what I'd go with. Keep the point behind the nuketeam that they're an organised force sent by the Syndicate, but change the objective to be more RP-friendly. If they had free objectives, it would give them the option to decide whether they want to steal, cause general havoc, or take hostages, etc. This gives the players involved, both crew and antags, a lot more choices in regards to how the round would play out.